9 ms·

Disclaimer: I have no clue if what I'm proposing is realistic or not, but: Perhaps the federal government should step in and gradually step down the level of s

• j_baker 12y ago
  The Midwest would make a good alternative place to grow. It won't be as prone to droughts and will have a longer growing season due to climate change. Either that or giving farmers a subsidy for growing crops that require less water. Our huge Almond industry is a giant water-guzzler.
  • malandrew 12y ago
    Almond Trees at maturity seem to be small enough to be movable to new locations (12-33 ft high, 12 in trunk)
    • chrisBob 12y ago
      You can move a tree. Moving a tree successfully is completely different. If you are in a race to grow a 20', you are generally better off starting with a seedling than a 10' tree because they handle the move so poorly.
    • jqm 12y ago
      You can't move almond trees to other areas. They wouldn't thrive there. You might as well suggest moving a Banana plantation from Honduras to Montana to save on shipping costs.
  • shit_parade 12y ago
    Much of the Midwest draws from the Ogallala Aquifer which is also under severe strain and has been overdrawn for nearly a century, many describe the water as 'fossil' water because the aquifer took many hundreds of thousands of years to grow to the size it has become and it's replenishment rate is significantly lower than our current demands. The Colorado river is also running dry, sometimes it does not even make it to the ocean, which is a basic sign of environmental health -- when rivers run dry significant changes occur rapidly. The Rockies which feed this river has had lower annual snow pack than expected for many years running now. New agricultural land in the US will be coming from the north as the climate continues to become dryer and warmer, already Canadian farmers have experienced a renewed vigor and development. Unfortunately there will likely be some land and water use competition between fracking as well as the Canadian Boreal forest, one of the largest and most pristine wildernesses in the north american continent.
• quaunaut 12y ago
  The problem is, this turns places that already have severe unemployment issues into 2008-era catastrophy. The entire central valley is based off of farming.
• malandrew 12y ago
  other, more water rich parts of the country My main question is: What are these other water rich part of the country that aren't already fully exploited for agriculture? Are there maps published somewhere that tell people where they can move to to establish farms elsewhere?
  • ars 12y ago
    The US has lots of young forests that grew after people abandoned the area that used to be farmed. If you ever go for a walk in the woods and wonder why the trees are all so (relatively) small, that's why. There is plenty of room for more farmland. You will have to cut some trees, but that's always been the case.
    • noobermin 12y ago
      I'm curious which places these are and why such areas were abandoned for farmland in the first place.
      • beowulfey 12y ago
        I can't speak for most places, but New Hampshire is almost all new-growth forest. If you roam the woods you'll find miles of ancient stone walls demarking the edges of long-gone farms. Of course, there's not much LAND in New Hampshire so it definitely can't take on California's role (even disregarding all the other problems), but I wanted to give an example of abandoned farmland.
        • malandrew 12y ago
          How competitive is NH with a region like California weather-wise? I would imagine that the growing season is much shorter in NH, making it way less attractive. Farming in New England is either specific to the climate or exists mainly because that's where many Europeans first colonized America. Just because farming made economic sense there 50-100 years ago, doesn't mean that it makes economic sense there today.
• acdha 12y ago
  I think simply phasing out water subsidies would be a huge win. I've read a fair number of reports suggesting that, while not great, the situation would be considerably improved if farmers had an incentive to invest in more efficient irrigation techniques or switch to more drought-tolerant crops. The catch is that it costs money and that's risky if you're the first one in the industry doing it – if the government announced that, say, the current subsidies would be reduced 10% a year starting in couple years that'd send a message to everyone that it's safe to take out loans because all of your competitors are going to have to do the same thing.
  • ThrustVectoring 12y ago
    There's a related issue of perennial, tree, and more orchard-like agriculture rather than seasonal crops. These farmers cannot reduce their water consumption without suffering massive losses - they're price insensitive on water to a large extent, and their choices are irrigate or go bankrupt. IIRC, avocado trees are a big culprit for California's future commitment to consuming water for agricultural purposes.
    • mbreese 12y ago
      You're right - any trees or vines are an issue when it comes to drought management. When you lose a tree or vine, it can take multiple years to get back to productive levels. It's very different when you're planting seasonal crops and can choose to skip a season.
    • jessaustin 12y ago
      Avocados are produced much more efficiently in Michoacán. Now that 85% of avocados sold in USA are imported, the conversion of these orchards to more sustainable agriculture would be less of a blow to the consumer.
    • acdha 12y ago
      The underlying problem here is that there isn't enough water to go around. There three outcomes: 1. Farmers stop growing more wasteful crops which are very water intensive and peak consumption drops below the crisis level 2. Avocado farmers raise prices based on increased costs 3. Some avocado farmers can no longer compete with avocado farmers in wetter areas of the US or Mexico I'm certain we'd see some combination of all three and that any of those outcomes would be preferable to what we're doing now where the combination of a severely distorted market and a patchwork quilt of existing water rights & management districts ensures that market forces are applied very inconsistently if at all.
• jonnathanson 12y ago
  My understanding is that California is so ideal for agriculture because of its climate (with the water scarcity being the big liability, the can we've been kicking down the road for decades). Other states, either individually or collectively, do not have the year-round, Mediterranean, relatively predictable climate to take on the load that California would drop. This includes not only total square acreage of arable, mild farmland, but also a bevy of specific crops that cannot be grown reliably in other states. (There are certainly wetter states, but they have seasonal extremes that make X, Y, Z crops very challenging.) When it comes to agriculture, California is in the rare position of being a jack of all trades and master of most. That is, until the water runs out. Then it starts to look more like the mild, but semiarid desert it was before we engineered it to run on various, unsustainable water sources. That being said, the subsidies have certainly placed us in a predicament -- a wildly unstable dependency -- that will be extremely tough to unwind. Something has got to change on that front, and quickly.
  • bradleyjg 12y ago
    There are other places in the world where these crops can be grown. People in those countries will be more than happy to trade us almonds, rice, bananas and the like in exchange for things we are great at producing like software and music. It's a win-win.
    • pkulak 12y ago
      Yes... Destroying an entire industry in a country is a win win...
      • slantedview 12y ago
        Growing water intensive crops like rice in California, which it grows a good deal of, is just stupid. That is an industry which needs to die. I'd argue the same for almonds, which are basically a water intensive cash crop.
        • whyenot 12y ago
• guelo 12y ago
  I'm not sure how you're imagining this would work. Are you suggesting the feds build giant canals across the Sierra Nevada and then across hundreds of miles of Nevada desert? To where?
  • Jtsummers 12y ago
    GP is suggesting that farming move to where the water is. By cutting subsidies, farmers or farm operators have less incentive to operate in regions suffering from droughts and more incentive to operate in a fiscally and ecologically sound manner.
• protomyth 12y ago
  If the rest of the country could grow the same crops as "America's Salad Bowl" we would. California is ideal for those crops and without the large population would be fine. It is probably past time to actually push desalination plants or convince a lot of people to move somewhere else.
  • wnissen 12y ago
    The people consume only a fraction of the water and it's dishonest in the extreme to say that things would be "fine" without them. Each ton of alfalfa in California consumes more water than a family uses in a year and yet sells for $200. There were 13 million tons sold last year. If we got rid of the low-value forage crops, the people (who would pay a hell of a lot more than $200 a year) would have more than enough water.
    • protomyth 12y ago
      So, as an intellectual exercise, if the Los Angeles and San Francisco metroplexes simply vanished, would there be enough water?
      • Smushman 12y ago
        It is hard to tell if you are trolling, a California farmer, or just being plain obtuse. tl;dr - NO. It would not make a difference. Google your question. The answer is below for you. Source: KCET article. February 10, 2014. California's water budget is skewed heavily toward agriculture. The conventional estimate is that 80 percent of the water used in California flows into the state's multi-billion-dollar agricultural sector.
        • protomyth 12y ago
          No, I'm actually asking the question since Wikipedia's quote is "In an average year, about 40% of California's water is used for agricultural purposes". Which makes me wonder about how far down California is that it is now 80%?
• refurb 12y ago
  What would happen if the gov't did nothing? 1. Water would become more scarce in California. Not everyone would get what they need. 2. Price of produce would go up, since there is a smaller supply. 3. We'd start to import more produce (either from outside the country or other states) because the price is the same or lower than the new, higher CA price. 4. Other farmers, who don't grow what CA grows, would start to because it's more profitable as prices rise. The gov't doesn't really have to do anything. That's the beauty of the free market.
  • abruzzi 12y ago
    But farmers aren't the only consumers of water, so is everyone that lives in CA. The issue as I see it is the drought combined with agriculture combine to drive the price of water up and it's unlikely the corrective (forcing farmers to migrate out of state to water rich locations) will happen before critical levels are hit for servicing residential populations and their needs.
    • refurb 12y ago
      Water is allocated via water rights. Not sure the specifics, but I would guess the gov't has water priorities and wouldn't let SF go dry just to keep the farms going.
    • seanflyon 12y ago
      Farmers are not the only consumers of water, but they consume approximately 80% of it. We are nowhere near running out of drinking water.
  • CoffeeDregs 12y ago
    I'm puzzled at the down votes you're receiving. I think you have a valid point and I generally have a similar perspective, but, in this case, it overlooks a significant externality: the destruction of the environment as rivers are pumped dry and (albeit, artificial) reservoirs run dry. Further, your solution could make the additional extraction of water quite profitable, which would further the destruction. The straightforward solution is to internalize the externality via a progressive tax on water usage. Then, as you said, the free market can regulate itself. Note: I'm not a fan of taxation, but it can be a good solution to managing externalities.
• smacktoward 12y ago
  This reminds me of a conversation I had a while back with some other folks like me who had grown up in Ohio. We were talking about what sort of program would help turn around Ohio's brain drain to the states of the South and West, which has been going on in various degrees since the collapse of the industrial Rust Belt. My thought was that, in a few decades, you won't need a program to make living in Ohio attractive; all you'll have to do is say "Ohio is a place where free water falls from the sky" and people will come running.
  • pimlottc 12y ago
    Access to enormous amounts of fresh water in the form of the Great Lakes may very well be the Rust Belt's ace in the hole in the coming decades...
• mc32 12y ago
  Farms work on thin margins, so jacking the price on them might not be the first step to take. A few things we can do: Increase rates to households. Fix the delivery system to residences so that we don't lose approx 30% to leakage Invest in desalination and make it a viable alternative Incentivize drip irrigation where applicable (ie. almonds, but not rice) Of course increased water conservation.
  • anigbrowl 12y ago
    Too goddamn bad, maybe it's time some more farmers went bankrupt. Reducing household water usage is not going to be enough to offset the hugely wasteful consumption by agriculture. My water bill is not too high, but I have to say that I am not too enthused about watching it go up this years after we cut my household usage by around 30% over the last year. I didn't see a corresponding drop in the bill because most of the sum is fixed charges for delivery and sewage treatment, and my actual metered usage is the smallest part of the bill. So despite putting a lot of effort into conservation I'm being asked to further subsidize the most wasteful users of water in the state.
    • mc32 12y ago
      If farming in Calif went bust, a few things would happen: Foodstuff would get more expensive. We'd import more food, meaning fewer 'local' products. Localvores would have to become 'televores'. Much of the no-education, low education jobs would disappear for people who have little other than their physical ability to offer the job marketplace.
      • anigbrowl 12y ago
        You'd also see a special election to recall the Governor, I think - Central California trends heavily Republican and people there have convinced themselves that it's all the fault of the coastal cities for not building desalination plants. They're not sympathetic to the environmental arguments. Gray Davis was recalled for less back in the early 2000s, although Arnold Schwarzenegger turned out to be a lot more moderate and forward-thinking than the Republican voters anticipated. Gov/ Brown is already in bad odor with the farming lobby, although the successful passage of the water infrastructure bond ballot proposal has given him more of a mandate than he might otherwise have had.